


all this, and love too

by ssilverarrowss



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Angst, Complicated Relationships, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:08:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28206600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssilverarrowss/pseuds/ssilverarrowss
Summary: It starts innocently, like most things do, with bright smiles and good intentions.
Relationships: Pierre Gasly/Charles Leclerc
Comments: 11
Kudos: 64
Collections: F1 Soup Kitchen Secret Santa 2020





	all this, and love too

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flamingosarepink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamingosarepink/gifts).



> Dear giftee, I loved your prompt! I hope I did it justice with this fic, affectionately dubbed the Frèrrari AU (kudos to Fir for that one.)👉🏻👈🏻 Happy holidays! <3 
> 
> Title from Richard Siken’s poem, 'Scheherazade.'

**2005**

It starts innocently, like most things do, with bright smiles and good intentions. 

Karting comes easily to Charles, even at the tender age of eight. Nothing compares to that swooping feeling he gets when he climbs into his kart and snaps his visor shut, the track expanding before him like a chessboard. 

Things outside of racing are not nearly as effortless. 

Charles has always been vaguely aware of the friendships forming in the paddock, the way the other kids gravitate towards each other, forming groups of three or five or six, and spending time together away from the track. He’s seen parents huddled together, cheering from the sidelines, passing around a tea flask when it’s cold. 

He tries not to be bothered by the sight, tells himself that he’s here to race—and anyway, he’s got plenty of friends back in Monaco. Still, he must look quite lonely, enough for his mother to eventually intervene. 

“Look,” she says, bending down to his height. 

He’s quite short for his age, his face rounded on the edges, hair dirty blond and unruly. He’s still got most of his baby teeth, but already thinks he might need braces in a few years. His mother frequently assures him that he’s beautiful, says he’s going to be a heartbreaker when he grows into his looks. He doesn’t really believe her, but smiles appreciatively at the compliments anyway. 

Charles glances over at his mother, taking in her kind face, then follows her line of sight. He recognizes the boy standing by his kart, but doesn’t think they’ve even spoken properly. He’s usually with his dark-haired friend—Esteban, his mind supplies—but he doesn’t seem to be here today. Without him at his side, the boy looks almost as lost and forlorn as Charles feels. 

“That’s Pierre,” she tells him. “Why don’t you go say hi to him?”

Charles nods at the suggestion, but doesn’t move. 

His mother leans in to press a kiss against his cheek before straightening up. “Go ahead. I’ll be right here if you need me.” 

Charles takes a few tentative steps forward. He can feel his mother’s eyes on his back, but doesn’t turn around. For a moment he wants to, desperately, but then Pierre lifts his head and offers a timid smile, and Charles finds he can’t.

“Hi,” Pierre says. There’s a small gap between his two front teeth. 

“Hi.”

Pierre is taller, narrower around the waist and wrists, and Charles has to look up at him when he speaks. His hair looks golden in the summer sun.

“You’re Charles, right?” 

He hadn’t expected anyone to remember his first name, certainly not an older boy. Charles’s eyes stray to his shoes before he remembers his manners and quickly glances back up at Pierre. “Yes.” 

“Cool.” He nods approvingly. “I’ve heard of you. You’re quick.” 

“Thanks. So are you.”

Pierre’s lips curve into a smile, and Charles reciprocates. Some of the awkwardness bleeds away. 

Pierre reaches inside the pocket of his jeans and pulls out two lollipops, proffering them to Charles. 

“Which one do you want?” 

It’s a simple question, and yet something about the gesture feels endearingly selfless. Just like that, Charles decides that he likes him. 

He plucks the strawberry-flavoured lollipop out of Pierre’s hand without hesitation. He’s always been partial to red.

“Good choice.” Pierre grins, fingers already working to pry open the green wrapper on his. 

Somewhere in the middle of all this, Pierre invites Charles back to his family’s campervan, parked around the back of the track along a row of other cars, vans and makeshift motorhomes. 

The hours slip by easily with Pierre. They talk about karting, their favourite Playstation games—they mutually agree on Gran Turismo 4 being the best, even though the age rating deems it inappropriate for them—and their families, beaming at each similarity they find. Charles thinks it’s funny how both of their mothers are named Pascale, and Pierre insists that this must mean they’re destined to become best friends.

By the time Charles’s parents arrive to collect him, it feels like they’ve known each other their whole lives. 

*

They see more of each other after that, making a conscious effort to spend time together both on and off the track. Some days Esteban is flanking Pierre, and other times he’s alone—the latter, Charles finds, is preferable. 

He feels a pang of guilt in his chest whenever he thinks about it too long, but he can’t help it. Esteban is nice, he supposes, but occasionally his smile is a little too sharp, and some of his remarks cut a little too deep. Sometimes he looks at Charles in a way that makes him wonder if he’s deliberately trying to hurt him, or if he’s just severely missing the mark with his attempts at humour. 

These days it’s not uncommon to see their mothers stand together, chatting animatedly, watching on as their sons race. They swap recipes, trade tips on how to cope with the challenge of raising growing boys, and exchange the occasional concerned glance when one of them is involved in an on-track incident. Their fathers, too, have grown close in the intervening months, bonding over their respective backgrounds—motorsport, it seems, has a funny way of bringing people together.

Even racing is more exhilarating with Pierre at his side. He’s always been there, Charles supposes, somewhere in his periphery, but now he’s hyper-aware of him in a way he wasn’t before. Suddenly it’s like his world has grown a little bit, his focus expanding to encompass Pierre. 

He can’t explain it, not really, lacks the words to articulate the feeling, but he knows that Pierre’s losses taste every bit as bitter as his own, and the victories just as sweet.

When Pierre wins, Charles feels no resentment, only pride.

*  
Despite its proximity, Saint-Tropez is nothing like Monte Carlo.

It feels smaller, quieter somehow, at least from Charles’s perch on the rented boat. The skyline is devoid of the luxurious high-rise flats that dot the horizon in his hometown, and the dainty colourful buildings that stand in their stead remind him more of Greece or Malta than Monaco. 

He tears his eyes away from the shore as Pierre’s elbow digs into his side. 

“What are you thinking about?” Pierre asks, fishing two neatly wrapped sandwiches out of the rucksack by his feet. He takes one for himself and presses the other into Charles’s hands.

“I’m going to own a boat like this someday,” he says. “Bigger.” 

“Oh yeah?” Pierre takes a bite out of his sandwich. He smells like summer—chlorine and sunscreen. “What are you going to do with it?”

That part Charles hasn’t figured out quite yet. He just knows he wants. The rest will fall into place later. 

Still, Pierre is expecting a response, so he shrugs and says, “Sail around the world. And have parties.”

“Am I invited?”

“Of course.” Charles doesn’t miss a beat. “You’re always invited.”

*

**2010**

In the end, it’s Sodi Racing Team that brings them together. 

The overalls are an unflattering combination of white, black and a particularly lurid shade of orange, and they sit awkwardly on Charles’s petite frame—too baggy around the waist and too long at the wrists—but his smile is bright and hopeful as he poses for photographs at his mother’s insistence. 

“It’ll be nice, won’t it?” she says, ruffling his hair. “Being teammates with Pierre.” 

Nice, he later decides, doesn’t even begin to cover it. 

Pierre takes up a semi-permanent residence in the Leclerc home two months into the championship season, after their parents mutually agree that it’ll be easier for everyone involved if Charles’s father accompanies both of them to the races. Most of the karting tracks are closer to Monaco than Rouen anyway, so it’s practical, and at his age Lorenzo is less of a dependent and more of an additional help.

And yet—

“I don’t want to be a burden,” Pierre murmurs.

“Nonsense,” Pascale tells him, smiling warmly as she fills his plate with a generous portion of scrambled eggs. “You’re always welcome here.”

Across the table, Charles fixes him with an obligatory _I told you so_ look. Pierre holds his gaze for a moment before glancing away, cheeks already heating.

That evening they maneuver a spare mattress into Charles’s room, setting it next to his bed. It takes up most of the available floor space, but Charles gives no indication that he minds the sudden downsizing.

*

Three months in, and the season is already exceeding Charles’s expectations.

Sodi is a great team—garish overalls aside—with a competitive chassis, sturdy and quick enough to allow them to score podiums and wins with relative ease. They fall into each other’s arms with each celebration, Charles rising to his tiptoes to make up for the missing centimeters. It’s not much, but at his age, it feels like a chasm.

He thinks about it sometimes, when it’s late and he can’t sleep, restless from the thrill of the still-fresh win. 

The mattress dips beneath Charles’s weight as he shifts on the bed, kicking out against the sheets and the stifling heat. It’s a clear night, the stars clearly visible where they flicker above the principality. The window has been left open, but the air is so humid that it provides no relief. 

Beside him, Pierre sleeps soundly. He looks enviably peaceful, the moonlight painting his profile a soft silver, his hair fanning out across the pillow like a halo. For a brief moment Charles’s entire world narrows down to Pierre’s soft breathing and the subtle rise and fall of his chest. 

The last five years have undeniably been kinder to Pierre. He’s grown taller and retained his slender frame, but he’s perceptibly broader now, having filled out just enough to shed the prepubescent awkwardness that Charles can’t seem to rid himself of. He wonders if he’ll ever stop trailing behind Pierre, or if there’ll always be that subtle imbalance; the difference a centimeter or a championship point makes.

He swallows, throat clicking, and turns to his other side, screwing his eyes shut.

*

“What happened with Esteban?” Charles asks one day. 

Immediately, he knows that’s the wrong thing to say. Pierre tenses up, like all the warmth and kindness have suddenly and brutally been leeched from his body. There’s a pause, long enough that Charles thinks Pierre is just going to ignore the question. 

“I don’t want to talk about him.”

It’s wrong to press on a fresh bruise, but he does it anyway. 

“Was he mean to you?” Charles guesses. “Did he hurt you?”

Pierre lets out a long, shuddery exhale. Idly, Charles wonders if he’s going to cry. He kind of hopes he won’t—not because there’s anything wrong with that, but because he feels incredibly ill-equipped to deal with it if he does. He thinks of his mother, of the way she’d crouch down and kiss both of his cheeks and murmur _Mon chou_ as soon as he stepped through the door after a bad race, still wearing his dirt-covered overalls, still smelling of the track. 

He wants to give that to Pierre now, anything to help. 

“I started winning more than him, and he didn’t like it. He got jealous, said some things that—” Pierre shakes his head. “Anyway, we’re not friends anymore, so just…don’t ask about him, okay?”

Charles’s eyes go wide. 

“I would never do that,” he blurts out. His cheeks begin to heat but he doesn’t retract his statement. The thought of anything being more important than their friendship feels impossible and utterly unfathomable. 

Pierre looks at him for a long moment. His expression softens. “I know, Charles. I know you wouldn’t.”

Pierre keeps looking, and it hits him, suddenly, that he could kiss him. He’s never kissed anyone before, so he doesn’t know if he’d like it, but it’s Pierre, so he figures he probably would.

Instead he brings his hand to Pierre’s face and gingerly brushes the hair out of his eyes. There’s nothing in it, just a gesture between two friends.

The familiar shriek of the three-litre V10s erupts somewhere in the distance, a stark reminder that time hasn’t stopped, that the world beyond the four walls of Charles’s family home still exists. 

“You hear that?” Charles grins, wide and excited. “That’s going to be us someday.”

That’s the big dream for all of them, always—the coveted endgame.

He’s feeling brave today, apparently, because he quickly adds, “Maybe we’ll even be teammates one day. Fighting for the championship.”

“Okay.” Pierre licks his lips. “Which team would we drive for?”

He already knows the answer. Charles’s heart beats for one team only—nothing else will do.

“It doesn’t really matter, as long as we’re together.”

*

“I’m moving to single seaters,” Pierre announces, later, after the championship’s been wrapped up. 

Charles glances up from the pile of clothes lying on his bed. They’ve spent all afternoon sorting through it, trying to pick out what’s Pierre’s so he can finish packing.

“Oh,” is all Charles manages. “Already?”

He winces. It sounds bad, even to his own ears. 

To his credit, Pierre doesn’t seem offended. He crosses the room, moving to sit on the bed next to Charles. 

“I’m sure you’ll get there soon,” he says, giving Charles an encouraging nudge with his elbow. “You’ve got a manager now, right?”

Charles nods distractedly. He looks like he’s one sudden movement away from either laughing or vomiting.

“You’ll still visit?” he asks. What he means is: _we’ll still be friends?_

Pierre opens his mouth like he wants to say something, maybe point out that Formula 4 is nothing like karting, that he’ll be travelling a lot, that their schedules won’t match up anymore, but then he clearly thinks better of it.

“Sure,” he says instead. “As often as I can. I promise.”

On impulse, he leans in and presses his lips against Pierre’s. It’s clumsy and graceless, mostly due to Charles’s inexperience and Pierre’s surprise, but it’s something. 

When they pull back, Pierre presses his thumbs into Charles’s cheeks, the warm flush there.

“Was that your first kiss?”

Charles ducks his head, poised to turn away in shame. He has half a mind to apologize, but he doesn’t know what good that’ll do so he doesn’t try.

“No, no,” Pierre murmurs. “It’s okay. You can, um—you can try again, if you like.”

It’s better, this time—still chaste, still sweet and unsure, but less awkward now that Pierre is anticipating it. He tenderly cups Charles’s face with both hands, lets Charles’s fingers find his wrist. He hasn’t even left yet, and Charles already misses him like an ache in his bones.

Still. It’s only the end of the world if they let it be.

* * *

**2022**

After Sebastian, unbelievably, impossibly, there’s Pierre.

_Welcome to the team, calamar!_ Charles writes on Instagram. He includes two photos in his post: one from their karting days, for emphasis, and one from Ferrari’s official announcement. _So excited to be reunited with you as a teammate. Let’s make this our best season yet._

*

“I still can’t believe this is really happening,” Pierre tells him some weeks later. “It feels like a dream.”

Winter mornings are cold in Jerez, biting at every sliver of exposed skin, and the occasional slant of sunlight, though visually appealing, does little to warm the track or the chilled drivers. 

“Even after the factory tour?” There’s a note of fond amusement in Charles’s voice. “Even after the seat fit? Even now?” 

He slips his hand out of the pocket of his team jacket and, very deliberately, pinches Pierre’s arm. He yelps indignantly before dissolving into laughter. 

“What was that for?”

Charles shrugs, tucking his hand back into his pocket. He should’ve worn gloves. “Just reminding you that it’s real. And that you look good in red. It suits you.”

Pierre’s cheeks go pink. It might be from the cold, or it might be something else entirely. 

*

The car, _their_ car—the SF22, as it’s been christened—looks promising. Sure, it already looked good on paper, and back at the factory, but after the chaos and upheaval of the past two seasons, Charles didn’t really dare hope—

But here they are, sixty two laps later, topping the timesheet. 

He meets Silvia’s eyes and finds that same tentative hope reflected back at him. 

*

They’re proven right in Melbourne.

It’s too early to talk about real domination yet, but their pace comfortably puts them ahead of the field. Pierre starts catching Charles with four laps to go, but he gamely defends his position and retains first. 

The magnitude of their shared feat—the first Ferrari 1-2 since Singapore all those years ago—doesn’t fully sink in until they reach parc fermé. Charles reaches for him first, enveloping Pierre in a warm embrace with unbridled joy. 

“Pierre did a fantastic job today,” Charles says to David, or Anthony, or whoever’s there to hear it. He’s flushed pink and just a little bit breathless, but his elation makes him radiant. “He was extremely quick, and he made no mistakes. I hope we can continue this performance going forward. It looks like it will be an exciting season for us.”

On the podium they fit together perfectly, Charles’s hand sweeping across Pierre’s back in a soft congratulatory caress. 

He’ll repeat the gesture later, in a very different setting. Pierre laughs, soft and uninhibited, against the crook of Charles’s neck, as he lets himself be pressed into the sheets. 

“You’ll win next time,” Charles informs him in between languid, open-mouthed kisses. They both taste like champagne, tipsy enough to feel pleasantly loose-limbed. 

“You’re going to let me?”

“No.” Charles clarifies, punctuating his words with an affectionate little bite. “I’ll never _let_ you.” 

“Then how can you be so sure?”

It’s Charles’s turn to laugh. “Because I know you, Pierre. I know you.”

*

Impossibly, he’s right about this, too. 

Pierre gets a better start, pulling away cleanly and increasing the gap with each lap. Charles spends most of his race fending off Max—relentlessly nipping at his heels, as always—which prevents him from taking the fight to Pierre in earnest. He feels a stab of annoyance at that, but it fizzles out as soon as Pierre takes his rightful place on the top step of the podium, beaming down at the team— _their_ team—as the anthems are played. 

It makes Charles think of Sebastian, the difference seven years makes.

“I’m so proud of you,” Charles tells him; keeps telling him, if only to see him make that face again, the one with the loving gaze and beatific smile. 

In moments like these it’s easy to believe, however briefly, that they can fight for the championship and still have this—and come out of it unscathed. Hope is a bad habit but he can’t help giving in. 

*

Charles goes into Bahrain with the combined thrill of a hot date and the dread of an imminent root canal. He’s not superstitious, certainly not enough for it to affect his driving, but his turbulent history with this particular track is enough to put him on edge.

Needlessly, as it turns out. After a clutch issue takes Max out of contention ten laps in, the race is theirs to lose. And it’s—everything.

Suddenly Charles is hit with smatterings of half-strung sentences, flashes of images, memories—that year they’d spent as teammates in karting, the relentless chase twenty odd laps into Singapore 2018, and just about every moment in between. It all boils down to this, the exhilarating back-and-forth that stretches on for the better part of forty seven laps. 

Pierre weaves around the turns and corners with ease, just tight enough to close the door and make it legal. He’s not infallible though, and as his tyres start to gradually wear down, he begins to make mistakes. Charles catches him after his second lockup, squeezing past in a move that makes the Ferrari pitwall collectively hold their breath. It sticks, despite Pierre’s best efforts to regain the lead, and that’s the order they arrive in at parc fermé.

*

Charles may have taken victory in Bahrain, but it’s Pierre who wins the next two races, drawing ever closer in the standings. Charles keeps his eyes trained on Pierre as he lifts the trophies, holding them proudly over his head. His mouth curves prettily around the lyrics of _Fratelli d’Italia_ , and Charles swallows, caught somewhere between breathless excitement and something else, frightening in its intensity.

*

They’ll talk about blame later, behind closed doors—heated words will be exchanged, back and forth, back and forth. But right now there’s this: the sickening, gut-wrenching knowledge that an ill-timed pit stop and an unfortunate undercut cost him the victory at his home race.

The second place sign seems to taunt him as he parks the Ferrari with more force than is strictly necessary. It’s petulant, maybe, but he can’t bring himself to care. The rush of blood in his ears gets worse, then better. He flexes his fingers in his gloves.

He congratulates his teammate with a pat on the back and a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. It’s perfunctory, he knows, but that’s all he’s willing to give.

“It wasn’t easy,” Pierre says. “It was a difficult race.”

Something mean and ugly wells up in Charles’s chest, but he suffocates it.

*

“Have dinner with me,” Charles says, on the Wednesday before the Italian Grand Prix.

They’re still in Maranello, due to drive up to Milan for the pre-Monza exhibition at Piazza del Duomo. 

Pierre looks at him for a long moment, searching his face intently, like maybe if he looks hard enough he’ll be able to see past him, to the boy he used to be. Charles isn’t sure what he finds there, in the lines of his face, but whatever it is, it’s enough to make him reluctantly agree.

“Did you come here with Sebastian? Before?”

The flickering candlelight paints Charles’s face tangerine, throwing his features into sharp relief. His expression softens at the mention of the name, before abruptly smoothing out into something more neutral. Studied nonchalance.

Pierre shifts under his gaze. They don’t talk about Sebastian any more than they need to. Still, he gets the sinking feeling that he’s not just intruding on some compelling what if, but rather a very real has been. 

“Yes,” he says. Pierre swallows, staring down at the menu in front of him, still trying to choose between risotto and fettuccine alfredo without much enthusiasm. 

“It’s tradition,” Charles continues. “All Ferrari drivers come here. And now you’re one, too.” 

His fingers find Pierre’s across the table, but his touch provides no comfort.

*

Monza is nothing short of a disaster. 

They tangle on the fifth lap, and it just devolves from there. It’s a stupid incident, one that could’ve easily been avoided if one of them had been less aggressive and the other less stubborn.

Pierre doesn’t retire from the race, but he might as well have, if only to save himself the embarrassment of leaving Italy empty-handed. Charles limps home an unremarkable sixth after an unplanned pit stop and moderate floor damage from their incident earlier. 

It takes all the patience Silvia’s accumulated across three seasons of putting out Charles and Sebastian’s fires to deal with the fallout. The disappointment feels thick and heavy, and it takes its toll on everyone. They’re a better team than this.

“You’re acting like I did it on purpose,” Charles hisses. “Like I did it because it was _you._ This isn’t—” He breathes out through his teeth. “It’s not personal.”

Pierre’s mouth goes into a thin line, and Charles instantly knows that it was the wrong thing to say. But then, he knew that before he said it, too.

Of course it’s personal, how could it not be? Whatever Charles is to him—a friend, he’d thought, might have to reconsider—there’s been years of it.

Most of the engineers look like they’d rather be anywhere but here in the briefing, witnessing a spat that should be private but regrettably isn’t. 

“It’s Monza,” Pierre says, like that explains everything. “You wanted to win.”

“Come on, Pierre. No one wants to win that badly.”

“You do.” It feels like a punch to the throat. “You always do.”

*

“What happened?” Natalie sighs. She’s looking at him with big sad eyes, like she was involved by osmosis and this is somehow her personal tragedy, too. “You used to be such good friends. Best friends, even. Isn’t that what you called him some years back? Your best friend?”

Charles used to think it was endearing, the way she exaggerates every emotion, or laughs a little too loudly at some unfunny remark just to put someone at ease. Now he just thinks it’s irritating. 

In his worst moments, he says, “I don’t think we were friends, and I’m not sure we can be. I don’t think that’s possible in this situation, when you’re fighting for the championship.”

*

Charles feels the turn of the season like a toothache in the back of his mouth. After a string of reliability issues, ranging from mundane to wholly spectacular in all the worst ways—that Q2 engine blowout in Japan will not be easily forgotten—the lead he’d built up in the first few races is melting away faster than he ever could’ve anticipated.

The atmosphere in the garage is fraught with tension, bleeding over from one side to the other. The whirring of the wheel guns and the clanging of the heavy metallic wrenches is a welcome respite from the long stretches of uncomfortable silence that Charles has grown so used to. They had some terse exchanges, but that was before Pierre decided the public feud wasn’t worth it and stopped speaking to him altogether. That must’ve been in Singapore; they’re going into Brazil now.

Most days, Pierre doesn’t even look at him. Fuck, Charles spends every waking moment thinking about him, and Pierre won’t even look at him.

It’s hard to believe they were in some kind of love once.

*

They take the championship all the way down to the last race, to Abu Dhabi. It’s a proper spectacle, a wheel-to-wheel, man to man battle of skill and mettle. They chase each other relentlessly, pouring years of determination, anger, frustration, sadness and yearning into their race craft, down to the final lap. They were evenly matched years ago, and they’re evenly matched now.

It’s Charles who wins, both the race and the championship.

The tension bleeds out of him as soon as he sees the chequered flag being waved. There are fireworks, and voices in his ear telling him he did it, he won. It brings the all too familiar sting of tears to his eyes.

He doesn’t expect anything from Pierre, not after the season they’ve had—not after everything they’ve done to each other. He’s certainly not expecting tenderness, arms pulling him into a warm embrace, fingers twisting into his overalls, red on red. 

Pierre reaches out and flips the visor of Charles’s helmet up. He could be angry. That’d be understandable. But doesn’t seem to be, can’t be, not when he’s looking at Charles like that. 

“You did it, Charles. You did it.”

Charles finds his hand, gives it a squeeze. There’s a promise of something there—later, maybe. 

*

As soon as the knock comes, Charles knows it’s Pierre. 

He steps aside to let him in, suddenly feeling unsure. A heat of the moment celebration in parc fermé is one thing, but when they’re alone like this, he can’t quite tell where they stand. 

“You did so well. Bravo, calamar.” He’s as warm as he can manage. Warmer. 

“I didn’t win,” Pierre reminds him. There’s no trace of bitterness in his voice, just some vague wistfulness. 

“Yeah, but you could have. Easily. And—” A sigh pushes past Charles’s lips. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. It comes too late and doesn’t feel adequate—years of this, and he still doesn’t know the right thing to say—but he needs to say it, needs him to hear it. “Pierre, I’m—” 

Pierre says, “It’s okay,” partly because it’s Charles, and partly because he doesn’t think he’s capable of being angry anymore. It takes too much out of him, and the more he thinks about it, the less it feels like it’s worth it.

“I’ll be better.” Charles presses his forehead against Pierre’s and breathes in. “We can be better to each other.”

“I still have to beat you.” 

“I know,” he says. “I know you do.”

Charles shifts closer and kisses him, soft, closed-mouth. He’s aware this doesn’t make things right between them—they’re a long way from that still—but it’s a start.


End file.
